It's not like having special eye surgery to visit galleries. It's more like creating special lighting in a gallery for viewing art. The difference being you don't have to use the amplifier all the time, for everything. What your complaint about having to select well-engineered and artistic music doesn't spell out is that this material does exist, and I imagine the setup would absolutely be worth it if you care enough. I'm not saying that all the modern audiophile stuff is true, but if you want to sit in a room and hear as close as possible recreations of your favorite symphony conducted by your favorite long-dead composer, why not try to get the signal as clear as possible?
I suppose my point is that transparency for artistic/entertainment purposes was achieved long ago. The fact that we need to involve lab equipment to decide on the superior signal chain is testimony to this.
Now, people seem to be trying to get better fidelity than that of the original recording medium, which is obviously insane. You're listening past the art to examine details of the noise floor of 20th century equipment that weren't even detectable at the time. What on earth is the point of that? I mean it's one thing to do that to a Stockhausen record, but I don't think Miles would be terribly impressed.
There's a law of diminishing returns for this stuff, and after a very small amount of time and money you're going to be better off contemplating the music and not the sound, even if the sound still aint great. You can be sure that's what the composer was doing.
I rarely read this. At which point do we shift the focus to the medium and not the message ? And even worse, when we optimize production toward the medium (3D 60fps movies).
Well, they're supposedly inseperable aren't they. I think that's part of the problem of the digital age, we haven't learned how to cope with what seems like the abstraction of message from medium.
By way of explanation, here is the preferred, "natural" signal chain for the music closest to my heart, UK rave music:
1. Source materials taken from old vinyl and put into a cheap sampler, often with only 12 bit resolution.
2. Recorded through a budget Mackie mixing desk, and bounced to DAT.
3. Pressed to a one-off acetate record (the analog version of a CDR)
4. Played through a cheap DJ mixer at a pirate radio station, and pushed through a rack of cheap compressors/limiters for broadcast.
5. Encoded as a microwave laser and beamed several miles to the actual transmitter, to obscure the location of the studio from the police.
6. Encoded again into FM and transmitted.
7. Picked up on a consumer radio and recorded to consumer cassette tape.
8. (Optional step) Said tape left in a box for 15 years under your older brother's bed.
Apart from step 8, this was largely how people listened to the music at the time. I have since obtained step 2 copies of music I had previously only heard at step 8, and all the emotion was gone. You could tell it had been shorn of context. So, as you can hopefully see, I find ideas of "fidelity" rather difficult.
When I and other young producers try and make records in this style, its a constant question as to how far we should go to imitate the sounds of all those dead media and ghost rituals. To me it feels pretty self defeating, but I still do it to an extent, because I think it sounds better. Sometimes I wonder what the modern day, internet-age equivalent is, and how to make it. I'm probably too old.
I know, I questioned the perception of records and movies since a long time. I was often disappointed when I finally get the disc I heard on the low grade radio in my mother's car, I actually liked the distorded sound better, somehow it made some harmonics pop better (at the expense of clarity).
Same for movies:
New movies : high resolution image, low resolution scenario/direction, low joy.
Old movies : crappy tired VHS image, probably better scenario/direction, high joy.
That's an interesting analogy, because the lighting in art galleries is not at all neutral. Most galleries point a few narrow spotlights at each piece on the wall. The spotlights are warm and incandescent, and their narrow spread illuminates the center of the work more than the edges. This makes the work look like it's emitting light. It has an enhancing effect compared to normal flat interior lighting. So the actual lighting in art galleries is more like the warm distortion of vinyl and naive tube amps, not high accuracy of this amp.
